The Colonels' Texas Promise

by Caro Carson

  At that, he half laughed as he half sat on the edge of his desk. “You can’t believe it?”

  For the first time, she managed a smile and wrinkled her nose apologetically. “I guess you weren’t expecting me to pop in this afternoon. Sorry.”

  “I hope you’re not sorry. That you’ll never be sorry.”

  She didn’t laugh. He hadn’t been kidding. Again.

  “You don’t have to honor an impulsive college promise,” she said, giving him chance after chance to take the easy way out. He could give her a smile, a friendly good to see you again, and tell her he had to get back to work.

  “But you must have wondered if I would honor it,” he said. “You didn’t come find me after all these years to tell me to say no. Is ‘no’ what you wanted to hear me say, or just what you expected me to say?”

  “I came to hear you say... I don’t know what I expected. I didn’t think you’d be...”

  “A man of my word?”

  “It was a silly pinkie promise, Evan. Nothing more.”

  She said it, but she didn’t believe it. Their promise had meant something. In the back of her mind, this day had always been there. As long as Evan stayed single, there’d always been this alternate future on the horizon. She’d needed that fantasy future, some years more than others, so at every reunion, every get-together with anyone from their circle, she’d asked casual questions. Have you heard from Evan Stephens? What’s he up to these days? Not married, still?

  The army was a small world. She and Evan had never been stationed together before, but on every post, she’d run into people who knew Captain Stephens or Major Stephens or Lieutenant Colonel Stephens. His rank progressed, but he was always single. Never married.

  She hadn’t thought to ask about a child. He sounded so confident, saying children didn’t scare him, as if he knew what parenthood was all about. A man didn’t have to be married to have a child. Had there been an accidental pregnancy in his past?

  Perhaps an intentional one. He could have been half of a couple who’d wanted to have a child but had no intention of ever marrying. He could have met a woman he thought would make a good mother for his child, and they might have decided to...to conceive a baby.

  Her flash of jealousy was unjustified, considering the existence of Matthew, but she felt it all the same.

  “Do you have a child?” she asked.

  Evan shook his head. She couldn’t decipher the serious look in his eyes, but since he never took his gaze off her face, she had to mask her irrational relief.

  “I knew you’d never married,” she said, “but I didn’t think to ask if you’d had any children.”

  “You asked people about me?” The smile that was really just a crinkle at the corner of his eyes reappeared. That was easy enough to interpret: he was pleased.

  “I had to. I couldn’t expect a married man to care if I’d been promoted to lieutenant colonel today.”

  “No, of course not.” He pushed away from his desk and walked back into her personal space, still studying her. Then he raised his hand to touch her, and she held her breath, braced this time for that light brush along her cheek. After all, there was nowhere else he could touch her. Her jacket covered her arms to her wrists. Her black tab-tie held her white dress shirt closed at her throat. She was safe in her uniform.

  She was not. He placed his whole palm on the side of her neck, warming her tight throat with the heat of his hand, holding her still as he bent his head and kissed her.

  It was the college green all over again. The night air, the string music. The impossibly soft mouth of a very hard man. She might have made a sound, an unintentional mmm of delicious recognition, like that first bite of homemade food after months of army rations, or it might have sounded like a whimper at just how overwhelming it was to taste the real thing after years of trying to remember a flavor.

  He spoke over her lips. “The courthouse it is, then.”

  This close, she could feel what she couldn’t see. Under that easy confidence, his heart was pounding, too.

  “You think this is a good idea?” She’d meant to state it as a fact, but her tone of voice had taken on a girlish kind of wonder.

  “I do. I have no intention of waiting another sixteen years for the next kiss.”

  He kissed her again, and she lost herself in that midnight feeling. Kissing him felt so very intimate. No tongues, no tasting—but oh, his mouth felt so sensual against hers.

  She’d had her arms around his neck back then. Today, her suit was too constricting, but she wouldn’t have reached up to throw her arms around him anyway. They no longer saw one another day after day, semester after semester, so although he still seemed familiar, they lacked that casual familiarity. But she felt weightless and wobbly, so she held on to him, a hand on each of his upper arms. His body warmth carried through the camouflage fabric. The flex of his biceps felt insanely sexy as he moved to cup her face in two hands.

  His fingertips were warm and gentle along her jawline, while the bulge of his arm muscle felt like steel. She breathed in at the contrasting sensations, parting her lips, and then he was tasting her, and she was tasting him. The instant rush of arousal—a throb, a wanting, a contraction low in her belly—was so strong, it was almost painful.

  This wasn’t why she’d come. This wasn’t the point. This wasn’t supposed to be about feeling sexy or—hell—even remembering what sex was, or how they’d once talked about having babies together. No, this was about...something...

  She dug her fingers into his biceps a little harder.

  Something...making babies...

  Matthew. Her son was the reason she was here.

  Her gasp ended the kiss.

  Evan Stephens, strong and terribly handsome, this more fierce version of the Evan she’d once known, laughed against her lips. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that I am single on the day of your promotion.”

  She backed away in one jerky step. Evan let her go, lowering his hands in an almost lazy way to settle on his hips.

  She forced herself to breathe slowly. She would not pant. She was in her thirties, she was a divorcée, she was the mother of a middle schooler, she was a lieutenant colonel, for crying out loud. She was not going to be flustered by a kiss, no matter how long it had been since she’d felt so aroused.

  How long had it been?

  An eternity.

  Sex was like riding a bicycle, maybe. Once you knew how, you never forgot—but she hadn’t come here to ride a bicycle.

  “You should meet my son first.”

  “Yes, I should.” Evan smiled, a real smile, a flash of white teeth to go along with those sexy, smiling eyes. How many times had she seen him flash that cocky smile? Every time a cute blonde girl cheered for him at a baseball game.

  Three knocks sounded at his office door. Evan had his back to it. He didn’t stop smiling at her, didn’t change the way he was standing with his hands on his hips, but he called out, “Enter.”

  The door opened. “Sir, the brigade S-3 is requesting to schedule a commanders’ roundtable for Monday morning.”

  Evan looked over his shoulder at the sergeant. “Put it on my schedule.” Then he reached for the patrol cap he had sitting on his desk, a sure sign that he was ready to leave the building. Everyone in uniform had to wear their cover—their hat—when outdoors. He handed Juliet her hat, its dark blue crown decorated with a gold eagle and the oak leaves of a field-grade officer. “What time is Matthew done with school? Does he have an aftercare program, or does he take a bus home?”

  “I’ve been picking him up. We’re still in temporary housing. We’ve been at the Holiday Inn for two weeks.”

  Evan shot her a look—she couldn’t guess the meaning of that one, either—before he headed for the door. He nodded to his sergeant as he gestured for Juliet to precede him out the door. “I’ll be out
the rest of the afternoon, Sergeant Hadithi.”

  “Yes, sir. Good afternoon, ma’am.”

  “Good afternoon,” Juliet replied by habit.

  She left the office with Lieutenant Colonel Evan Stephens by her side, matching her step for step.

  They were really going to do this.

  Chapter Three

  Evan followed Juliet down the stairs and out into the crisply cool and brightly sunny Texas afternoon.

  He followed Juliet.

  Juliet Grayson was here.

  He’d kissed her, and everything was still there. Everything that he hadn’t known how to handle at twenty-one. Everything he’d recognized too late at twenty-seven. Everything he’d tried to bury at twenty-nine. Everything he’d thought he’d never have in this lifetime.

  Because I don’t deserve to have her.

  He shoved the guilt deep down, where it had been locked away with his memories of Juliet. Now he could allow the memories of Juliet, but he wanted to keep the guilt buried deep. Maybe he’d inadvertently pushed the wrong man her way, but he’d done the right thing and stayed out of their life once he’d heard Rob Jones had gotten her to the altar. Evan hadn’t had anything to do with their divorce.

  She’d gotten divorced anyway. She was free. Single. And she’d come to remind him of their marriage pact on the very day the conditions of that pact had come into play.

  She’d come to do more than remind him.

  You should meet my son first, she’d said, and he hadn’t been able to contain his smile. First. Before the actual ceremony, she’d meant, as if it were a foregone conclusion that they would be married. She had come not to say hello, not to reminisce, but to fulfill the pact they’d made the night before their graduation.

  He needed to touch her again, to feel her skin so he’d know this wasn’t a miraculous mirage dredged up from subconscious dreams. He wanted to give her hand a squeeze of excitement or reassurance or something.

  He could not. It would break regulations. There was no hand-holding between soldiers in the US Army, not even if they wore one another’s wedding rings. If Evan were wearing the more formal blue service uniform and if it were after dark and if they were attending a social function, then he would be allowed to offer her his arm to escort her through the parking lot.

  That wasn’t the situation now. He was the battalion commander, being saluted by every single person they passed. She was being saluted as well, of course, since they were the same rank. He loved the way they both raised their right arms in sync and briefly touched the right corners of their brims to return the salutes. He loved the sound of her high heels on the concrete sidewalk. He loved the cool but sunny Texas winter weather. He loved every frigging thing about the whole frigging universe.

  Juliet Grayson was here.

  She stopped beside his vehicle. Since it was parked in a spot marked Battalion Commander, it was no surprise that she guessed which vehicle was his.

  “A Corvette,” she said with a little laugh.

  The memory was so clear, it was incredible that he’d forgotten it until this second. He laughed, too, and imitated the frustrated lament of a college-age Juliet. “Why is such a sexy car always driven by somebody old enough to be my grandfather?”

  She shrugged a shoulder as she traced one metal curve, but her lips twitched with mischief. “I was right, you know. When I saw this car on my way into the building, I had a moment of worry that you were ready to retire to Florida.”

  “Not yet. Nor for a long while.” He watched her feminine fingers sliding along his sports car. “We can enjoy this while we’re still young.”

  Her fingers paused. That brief, familiar flash of Juliet’s teasing smile disappeared, leaving something more polite, more distant. “Unfortunately, they haven’t invented a Corvette with more than two seats. We’ll have to use my car when we go anywhere together. Party of three, not two.”

  “Makes sense.” But he would take her for a long drive, just the two of them, top down, engine purring. Soon.

  “School lets out in forty-five minutes,” she said.

  He checked his watch, a simple reflex. The second hand swept in its circle. The minute hand had moved just a quarter of an hour since he’d last checked the time. Juliet had walked into his office fifteen minutes ago. It hit him hard: his life was never going to be the same from this moment on. In less than a quarter of an hour, everything had changed.

  Was it possible for life to take a turn for the better so suddenly?

  God knew it could turn bad in less time than that. A car accident could alter the course of a life in the second it took tires to screech and metal to crunch. An explosion could shatter the monotony of a base camp overseas. One minute, life was fine, and in the next, it would never be the same. He’d seen it happen enough times to enough people. They could pinpoint the exact moment their life had abruptly been set on a new path. Whether one of nightmares or prosthetic limbs, regrets or rehab, they hadn’t been ready for the sharp turn. No one was ever ready.

  Evan hadn’t expected his life to take a sharp turn today for better or for worse. But as Juliet stood by his Corvette and told him about school schedules—spring sports teams had started practicing, but games didn’t start for two weeks—he knew his life would never be the same again. He’d been a confirmed bachelor fifteen minutes ago; Juliet Grayson had set a silver insignia on his desk, and now he was going to be a husband and a father—or rather, a stepfather. A family man.

  Finally.

  The euphoria took him utterly by surprise.

  “Juliet.” Damn it—were his hands shaking? He clasped them behind his back, a soldier’s stance, parade rest.

  Juliet had fallen silent at the way he’d said her name.

  He forced himself to relax. At ease.

  She was waiting for him to say something else. How many times had he seen her look at him just like this? Waiting for him to help her haul somebody’s parents’ used couch up a flight of stairs. Waiting for him to pour some rum they were too young to have into her can of Coke at a party that wasn’t supposed to be held in the dorm. Waiting for him to dance with her by a fountain on the green.

  “What, Evan?”

  I feel like I’ve been waiting my entire life for this minute.

  He couldn’t say that. He couldn’t say anything. He could only look at her—he couldn’t look away from her, a vibrant, vital woman who was about to become a vibrant, vital part of his life, a life that had just changed radically.

  He forced himself to speak, even if emotion made his voice a little too rough, a little too low. “I forgot... I’d forgotten how you looked.” I forced myself not to think about it.

  “Oh.”

  “I’m saying this wrong. I didn’t forget what you looked like,” he admitted to her. To himself. “I forgot how it was. How good it was to have you as my friend. How good it is to have you here, standing right here. To watch your face as you talk. To hear your voice. It’s—”

  “I know what you mean. It’s really different to see you in 3-D after so many years of only having those old photos from college.”

  She’d looked at photos of him, for years.

  He could not touch her. Not here. Not now. But soon.

  She’d come to get him at his own office, a very Juliet move. When she wanted something, she’d always gone out and gotten it. And now she wanted him.

  She could have him.

  “I’m overwhelmed.” His voice was still rough, but he was sure now what he meant to say. “I can’t get enough of looking at you. I’m overwhelmed that I’m going to have such a very beautiful wife.”

  She closed her eyes. He watched her hand close into a fist on the roof of his Corvette, and then she spoke, although there was a note in her voice that didn’t quite sound like any note he’d heard from her before. “Do you think this Corvette coul
d get us to the courthouse and back in forty-five minutes?”

  At that, he laughed—and stepped back from her. “Don’t tempt me.”

  She looked at him then, and damn near blushed—no, she did blush, heat reddening her cheeks on this cool February day. This senior army officer, with her overseas stripes on her sleeve and her chest full of ribbons and medals, was blushing.

  She kept her chin up and her eyes on him. Not a blush; she was flushed. That note in her voice hadn’t sounded familiar because it held arousal, the anticipation of passion, and she’d never spoken to him that way in college. Everything in him tightened in response, but he was standing in his battalion’s parking lot.

  “I looked it up, and the courthouse is open until five,” Juliet said, but despite any flush of desire, her tone had already changed. More practical, less passionate. “But they stop issuing marriage licenses at four thirty. We’d have to rush.”

  “You’re serious.”

  “There’s a three-day waiting period in Texas, but they’ll waive it because we’re active-duty military.”

  The caveman part of him wanted to rush her into the car and take her to the nearest judge to claim her as his, permanently, but he was too experienced, too well trained by the army to do anything but think coolly when emotions were running hot. Something was off. “What about your son?”

  Her jaw clenched. Her fist clenched. “He’s in a phase that can be... It might be just as easy to simply let Matthew know it’s a done deal.”

  “You want to go to the courthouse with me and then pick up your son and introduce me as the man who just married his mother?”

  “Yes.” She dropped her hand, relief written all over her face. “Do you think we have time?”

  “Juliet, that’s insane.”

  “All of this is insane. I already said so in your office.” She laughed.

  He didn’t. She’d forced that laugh.

  It was her turn to check her watch. “If we took my car instead, we could go from the courthouse straight to the school. As long as there isn’t a line at the county clerk’s office, there might be enough time that way.”